


a fistfull of dollars

by Ginny_Potter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blow Jobs, Canon Compliant, Explicit Language, Fluff and Angst, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Pre-War, Sexual Tension, Slice of Life, Smut, internalized ableism, until the last few minutes of Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:56:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29544114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ginny_Potter/pseuds/Ginny_Potter
Summary: Bucky cocks his head to one side, questioningly. “Would you?” he asks.“What?” It’s almost a squeak now.“Pay me that much.”Or, in a fake it till you make it scenario, Steve and Bucky keep paying each other for a sweet, sweet time.Fromthis Tumblr prompt.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 39
Kudos: 110





	a fistfull of dollars

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> I hope that things are... I don't know if I should say "going well" in a 2021 that up till now feels like a 2020 2.0. Anyway. Good vibes only to y'all.
> 
> So I saw [this](https://musette22.tumblr.com/post/640574283427561472/youhavenoideahowmuchihatethis) a while ago and I was struck by inspiration.
> 
> I just want to say that I spent an ungodly amount of time researching how much a sex worker could earn in 1937. If the Big Brother is watching me, I swear I am not planning to start a prostitution ring. I only write fics. I swear. 
> 
> Thank you, lovely [Lillaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillaby), for betaing this. You are a godsend. Any remaining mistake is mine.
> 
> Thank you to the people who came up with this amazing scenario. I don't believe they know me, and probably they'll never see this fic, but I want to thank them nonetheless: [this-is-a-job-for-vesemir](https://this-is-a-job-for-vesemir.tumblr.com/post/640481428559249408/he-meant-to-suggest-they-pay-each-other-for), [ smokeybluebrooke-lyn ](https://smokeybluebrooke-lyn.tumblr.com/post/640483830186295296/this-is-a-job-for-vesemir-he-meant-to-suggest), [ youhavenoideahowmuchihatethis](https://youhavenoideahowmuchihatethis.tumblr.com/post/640500306123292672/smokeybluebrooke-lyn-this-is-a-job-for-vesemir) and of course [ musette22](https://musette22.tumblr.com/post/640574283427561472/youhavenoideahowmuchihatethis) from who I reblogged it from.
> 
> Lots of love.

The liquid inside the glass is amber. Steve is pretty sure about it, but only because when Bucky came home he said, “Got a treat here, Stevie,” and slammed a dark-ish bottle of Old Taylor on the table.

It’s already halfway gone. Bucky and the bourbon.

“Are you drunk?” 

It had been a rhetorical question.

Steve had caught Bucky’s hat when he had thrown it like a frisbee and hung it on the hook beside the door. 

“Yes,” Bucky had answered, somehow proudly. “And you’re about to be, cuz we’re celebratin’.”

Steve had smiled indulgently. Bucky’s curls were escaping from their prison of Brylcream and his cheeks were red like apples. He licked his lips and Steve found himself following the movement with his eyes. He cleared his throat.

“What are we celebrating?”

Bucky smiled broadly. “I got a promotion,” he said, all giddy.

So yeah, the liquid inside the glass is amber. Because it’s bourbon. Even if Steve cannot really _recognise_ it. Colors… colors are difficult. He frowns. Especially after drinking too much alcohol. Stuff becomes blurry and color becomes duller and Bucky’s half asleep, curled around the bottle, cradling it like a newborn, like Becca’s baby, like one of his sisters when they were kids. Steve’s lying on the carpet, an old thing they found outside one of the nice houses in Canarsie that someone had left behind. From here, Bucky manages to look graceful, even while slumped in the armchair, heavy-lidded and almost asleep. It’s uncanny.

“Buck?”

“Mh?”

“How much?”

He opens an eye. “Wha…?”

Steve groans. “How much more a day?”

Bucky furrows his eyebrows. “Almost one dollar and eighty cents,” he finally says, satisfied by his calculations.

Steve sneers.

“What?” Bucky tilts his head to look at him, a little offended. “Not good enough for you, Rogers?”

“Ah shut up, it made me think about a thing.” He waves a hand and hits Bucky by mistake on his knee.

“What thing?”

Steve tries to concentrate. It’s hard. The glass is near his left hand, on the floor, close to the frayed hem of the carpet. It’s amber. It’s dark ochre. Does it really matter?

“Steve.” Bucky flicks him on the forehead. “Steve, Steve, Steve.”

“Jerk,” Steve mutters, turning on one side and facing Bucky who is still slouched dramatically.

“What thing?” Bucky repeats.

“You remember the other day,” he says. “When I got into that… altercation.” Bucky raises his eyebrows and Steve cannot understand if he looks struck by Steve’s eloquence or if he would like to point out that it wasn’t really an altercation but merely the umpteenth fistfight Steve threw himself into without thinking.

“You have to narrow it down for me, pal.”

Steve makes a sound of impatience. “C’m on, Buck. Don’t be a pain.”

“All right, all right, let’s pretend I know the day you’re talkin’ ‘bout, go on.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but goes on. “I was passing by the Navy Yard, finishing some delivery for Mr Rosenberg after my shift.”

Bucky hums.

Steve looks at him out of the corner of his eye. It’s a good story and he doesn’t want Bucky to fall asleep in the midst of it. But Bucky isn’t asleep. He’s looking at Steve through those long eyelashes of his.

“So, I end up cutting through Sands Street.” Steve hesitates, but Bucky’s expression doesn’t change. “And in one of the back-alleys there was this kid on his knees struggling against this, uh, butchy sailor.”

Bucky covers his face with a hand and shifts on the armchair, bending his right knee. “Oh fuck, I bet I know where this is goin’.”

Steve blushes but goes on. “Well, I step in to help, even if he was a hooker, you don’t manhandle people like that.”

Bucky starts to snigger, his long fingers covering his mouth to stifle the giggles and Steve hits him on his calf.

“Shut up! Well, I step in and the sailor curses and swears and tells me to mind my own business.”

“He clearly never met you,” Bucky manages to say, before succumbing to another fit of laughter.

“This is not the point of the story!” Steve hits him again and Bucky lowers his hand, a Cheshire cat smile on his face and glassy, bright eyes, full of mirth. Steve wants to draw him, he wants to hit him more, he wants to…

“What is then?”

“The boy shoved me and I hit my head against the bricks. That’s why I was bleeding by the way, thanks for the concern.”

Bucky huffs. “Don’t be a drama queen, I fucking mended that when you came home bloody.”

“And he said,” Steve cuts him off, raising his voice. “And he said, ‘You nitwit.’”

“He didn’t say ‘nitwit’.”

“He said, ‘Aw shucks,’”

Bucky shakes his head, smile widening, and Steve smirks as well because it’s impossible not to when Bucky gets all playful like that. “He said, ‘Golly gee, you just lost me two dollars.’”

Bucky just looks at him with his eyebrows raised.

“So James Buchanan.” Steve raises on his elbows, trying not to laugh, putting on his most solemn expression, as much as possible, since he’s still lying on the floor. “A hooker in the Navy Yard makes more money than you.”

Bucky’s face falls and he looks stunned for a second. 

Then he starts laughing. 

And Steve, well, Steve follows. It’s inevitable, really. Maybe it’s the bourbon, maybe it’s the surreal story, maybe it’s the fact that they break their backs every day for a handful of cash to barely make ends meet. They laugh and laugh and laugh, bordering on howling, until Mrs Manfredi of the third floor hits the ceiling with the top of the broomstick to make them stop making so much noise. That only results in making them even more hysterical, tears gathering at the corner of their eyes and Steve’s head going all funny and floaty when not enough air makes his lungs seize. He ends up succumbing to a coughing fit, Bucky falling off the armchair and on the floor in his haste to help him out, muttering _shitshitshitshit_ and making it all worse because now Steve is giggling at his fussing.

Ten minutes and deep breaths and a shared menthol cigarette later, they are both sitting on the floor, back against the loopy legs of the armchair.

“So,” Bucky says and Steve hiccups, his lips twitching. 

Bucky glares, but the effect is negated by his traitorous mouth, whose corners cannot help but curve upwards. “Don’t.”

Steve exhales, trying to resist the urge to give in to laughter once more. He slumps a bit and tilts his head on the side so that it is leaning against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky is warm and solid against Steve’s cheek, the cotton of his shirt a bit worn but still good quality. The leather of his suspenders is the same color as the bourbon they drank, and it brushes uncomfortably against Steve’s temple. But it doesn’t matter. The right side of his body presses against Bucky’s left, head to toe, his hand tucked in between their thighs and his knuckles brushing against the knob of Bucky’s knee. Steve inhales deeply. Bucky smells of cigarette smoke and liquor and something tangy and strong that comes from being outside all day. Steve can still recognise a wisp of cologne there. It is so familiar, so cozy, that his eyelids start to feel heavy.

“Do you think I would?”

Bucky’s voice is coming from afar and up close at the same time. It feels like that time they went to Coney Island and it was so fucking hot there were no families around and Steve agreed to take off his clothes and have a dip in the Ocean with Bucky and the water was still inexplicably freezing and Steve had gone down down down under the water to prank Bucky and he could see Bucky through the water and the gleams of the sun reflecting on the surface. He could see his profile distorted by the waves, through the waves, and the white skin of his shoulders that had already started to pink. Bucky had been calling him, cursing, and Steve could hear his name, but in an odd, twisted way. Faded. Numbed. That time Bucky had been quite annoyed, concerned, even. This time… there is no inflection in his voice.

“Would what?” Steve manages to grumble, blinking slowly.

“Be paid that much to suck cock.”

Suddenly, Steve feels more awake than ever. It’s as if lightning just ran through him. He pulls back, straightening his crooked spine as much as his marionette-body allows him to. Bucky is looking at him with such a neutral expression, a part of Steve wonders if he just imagined Bucky pronouncing those words.

He chuckles, nervous. “What?”

Bucky cocks his head to one side, questioningly. “Would you?” he asks.

“What?” It’s almost a squeak now.

“Pay me that much.”

Bucky shifts and his right suspender slips down his shoulder. It’s an accident, something totally random, but Steve feels his body go aflame.

“Buck,” he tries to say, but whatever he planned to express dies on his lips and he doesn’t know what to add.

Bucky licks his lips and his eyes are so dark and liquid it’s like looking down a well. “Would you?” he urges him.

And Steve nods, just once. It’s mechanical, wry, and clashes with the way in which his voice shakes when he whispers, “Yeah. Yeah, Buck.”

Bucky leans over, weight shifting on his left side, then on his knees, crowding Steve, causing him to lean back against the armchair, and in a single moment of insanity, Steve thinks Bucky Barnes is gonna kiss him. He feels his hot breath against his cheek, he can count the freckles on his nose, but Bucky just leans over and grabs Steve’s jacket, abandoned on a stack of books. It falls with a thump in Steve’s lap and he has no idea what to do with it.

Bucky lifts his eyebrows, expectantly. Then, when he sees Steve is completely dumbstruck, he rummages in the fabric and fishes out Steve’s wallet. He dangles it between his thumb and forefinger and Steve catches it instinctively. The two-dollar bill inside is crumpled, but still in pretty good shape, considering, and Steve presses it into Bucky’s sweaty palm. Their fingers touch and Steve thinks, _This. Exactly this. This is the most erotic thing that has happened my whole fucking miserable life_.

Bucky smirks. Honest to god smirks, and hooks the bill between his left suspender and his shoulder, and a second later he is unbuttoning Steve’s pants as if he has been doing nothing else for the rest of his life.

_He must be uncomfortable_ , Steve thinks wildly, watching as Bucky rearranges himself on his knees on the hardwood floor just beyond the frayed hem of the carpet, letting his shoulders fall. He must be, because the floor is old and creaky and fucking hardwood, right? And because his back is not supposed to be that, that... But then Bucky’s taking Steve’s cock out of his briefs and Steve is not sure he can formulate more coherent thoughts to save his life. 

He’d like to see Bucky’s face, his expression, but the apartment is too dark and Bucky’s looking down, head tilted, like a painter studying the white canvas in front of him. Steve’s heart is beating furiously, but he doesn’t have time to feel self-conscious at Bucky’s examination because Bucky’s spitting on his palm and Steve feels dizzy with want and with disbelief and _Bucky’s hand is on his cock_ . He strokes him with purpose, and Steve feels himself growing hard in his palm, inside the cage of his fingers, blood rushing south, far from his brain, right into his groin, and then Bucky is on him and _fuck_. Fuck.

He starts with kitten licks, tasting the waters, as they say, and Steve wants to burst out laughing for that ridiculous thought, but he really doesn’t want Bucky to take it the wrong way because first, he doesn’t want to _offend_ Bucky, and second, his bits are literally in his hands right now - in his _mouth_ \- and and and...

Jesus, Mary, _and_ Joseph.

Bucky’s peppering the side of Steve’s cock with open mouthed kisses, the flat of his tongue pressing against the most sensitive spots, hot breath caressing his skin. He nuzzles at the unkempt dark curls at the base, and Steve is going to fucking lose it. His hands close into fists and the back of his head thumps against the armrest and Steve moans, a deep sound right from his belly and Bucky chuckles.

The asshole.

Steve’s about to tell him. _Asshole. You’re an asshole, Buck_. But Bucky decides that it is time to stop fucking around and teasing, and closes his mouth around the tip, hollows his cheeks, and swallows him down. Swallows him down. Steve blanks. He has no idea if Bucky did this before, if he’s not even that good for general standards, if there even are standards, but one thing he is completely sure of is that Bucky has a fucking knack for sucking cock.

Steve wants to grab his curls and push him down, push him towards his groin, make him take it. He wants to push against the back of Bucky’s throat and go farther, deeper, but his hands are closed in fists at the sides of his body, and he just spreads his legs wider, welcoming him, closer, closer, _come closer_. Bucky hums in agreement and shifts his weight, back sinuosly bent, and the vibrations send Steve’s head up to fucking Mars.

Steve is pretty sure he is whimpering and moaning and babbling nonsense, but he cannot even hear his own thoughts because he is too focused on _BuckyBuckyBucky_. Bucky’s hand at the base of his cock, Bucky’s dark, lucid eyes closed shut, Bucky’s eyelashes casting deep shadows on his cheeks, his cheeks that are bulging, fucking bulging with Steve’s cock every time Bucky sinks down and… and… Bucky’s red lips running up and down his shaft, Bucky’s droll dripping down the cleft of his chin, down on the floor, and it’s so fucking filthy and glorious and Steve cannot take his eyes off it all.

Then Bucky pulls back, sweat beading his forehead, chest heaving up and down, panting for air, eyes still downcast, the back of his hand wiping his chin. Steve takes him in, all of him; on his knees between Steve’s legs, his dark curls sprouting free from the remains of Brylcream and… and the two-dollar bill stuck between his shirt and his suspenders.

For some weird, fucked up reason, that does it.

Steve barely manages to cover himself with his hand before he’s coming, harder than he ever has before, his crooked spine curving painfully as spasms run through his body and his lungs threaten to betray him once more. He gasps and pants and his head is spinning and Jesus Christ he has never felt more alive.

When he comes down from it, Bucky’s sitting on his heels, looking at him in a way he’s never looked at him. His eyes are dark and his lips are red, his hair a mess, his whole self debauched and decadent like a Caravaggio painting. He looks more gorgeous than Steve’s ever seen him. And he doesn’t know what to make of it. 

When he’s sure Steve won’t die on him, Bucky gets up without saying a word, grimacing as his junctures pop. He walks to the door. It’s just five feet from them but it feels like a mile. Bucky’s jacket is hanging tidily from a hook, because he’s _not a slob, Steve_. Incomprehensibly slowly, he takes his wallet from the inside pocket, opens it, and with a sideways look at Steve, he slides the crumbled two-dollar bill inside.

They don’t talk about it. 

Steve wouldn’t know how. How could he even begin to breach the subject? _Hey Buck, remember when you sucked me off? ‘Twas swell, wasn’t it? Wanna do it again sometime?_

Yeah, not going to work. 

But at the same time… at the same time he cannot stop thinking about it. He thinks about how intense Bucky had looked, how determined, how inscrutable. Bucky, who was always so gregarious, so open, and wore his heart on his sleeve. In that moment… he was all but. Steve doesn’t know what to make of it.

But he _wants_. So fucking much.

And he doesn’t know _how to_ get it.

Until the day when Mr Rosemberg’s daughter marries Mr Cohen’s son and Mr Cohen’s son loses the job at the Manhattan and Queens Traction Company and therefore he has to start working for no other than his father-in-law Mr Fucking Rosemberg. 

And Steve is fucking laid off.

“Fuckin’ fucker. Motherfuckin’ friggin’ fucker.”

_And_ Steve is swearing in a not particularly original way - Bucky’s the one good with words - and it’s not the point anyway, it just has to be functional. 

“He thinks he can buy me giving me fuckin’ meat, the fucker.” He slams down the meat tenderizer with all his might, and the poor piece of beef lying on the table makes a squeaky sound. Steve’s not sure it should. He suddenly feels bad. He hasn’t ruined it, has he? How would you even ruin meat by hitting it with a meat tenderizer? 

Steve is still looking morosely at the piece of beef when the key turns in the lock and Bucky steps in, taking off his hat. He stops in his tracks when he sees Steve looming over something pulpy and reddish.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Beef,” Steva answers, colorless.

“Yeah, Steve, I can see it’s beef.” Bucky steps forward, takes off his jacket and hooks it beside the door, carefully placing his hat on top of it. He circles the table and carefully takes the meat tenderizer out of Steve’s hand. Steve lets him.

“Mr Rosenberg laid me off,” Steve says, because it’s useless to hide it. “He gave me beef because he felt guilty, I guess,” he shrugs.

Bucky exhales from his nose. “That fucker,” he spits out.

“That’s what I said,” Steve agrees, but he’s already feeling his rage dim. He’ll look for something else. There was always something else. Must be.

“From one day to the other,” Bucky goes on, walking up and down. He’s starting to get heated - Bucky’s like that, it takes a while. “We’re not buying so much as an apple from that fucker anymore. I can’t believe it.”

Steve sighs, crossing his arms and leaning against the sink. They will and they both know it. Rosenberg’s the cheapest there is that still sells edible stuff. They don’t want to end up eating shit if they can avoid it.

“His son-in-law worked for M&QT.”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Bucky bites back, nastily, but he stops pacing and leans against the door.

They look at each other for a second.

“I heard A&S is hiring,” Bucky mutters.

“Yeah, well A&S standards are higher than Mr Rosenberg’s.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “You are perfectly up to A&S standards.”

“Bucky, come on.” It has already been a shitty day. He doesn’t want to fight with Bucky over his own merits or Abraham and Straus’ standards or whatever. “I’ll find something. I always do.” He accurately avoids mentioning that it happened before that he didn’t actually find anything for weeks, even months, and Bucky had to provide for the both of them - he still feels shame eating him from the inside for that. He shrugs again, opening a drawer to find a knife. This fucking meat won’t prepare itself. He can feel Bucky’s eyes on him, and what if he is thinking about the same thing? When he had to support the both of them like Steve was his sickly wife and he was the big man who brought the bread home? 

The words leave his mouth before he can filter them through his brain. “I can always go down to the Navy Yard and make two bucks every time I suck off some sailor.”

Suddenly, the atmosphere changes. 

Fuck.

Steve stills, eyes widening, as he realizes his own words, one hand still outstretched towards the carving knife inside the drawer. Bucky is an unmoving shape in the corner of his eye. The silence that falls is heavier than a ton of bricks. Steve can hear the blood pumping in his veins.

_Fuckfuckfuck_.

He is glued to the floor. 

But then Bucky moves, slowly, but securely. And Steve already knows where he is heading. 

The two-dollar bill slips on the uneven surface of the table, Bucky’s index and medium finger keeping it from folding in half. It is crumpled, but still in pretty good shape, considering.

Steve raises his gaze and meets Bucky’s eyes. He looks different from last time. Maybe it’s because of the absence of bourbon. The fingers keeping the note still are shaking a little, and there is an undertone of insecurity in the gesture, as if Bucky is asking for permission rather than offering him… what exactly? What Steve just jokingly proposed? Two bucks for a suck-job?

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, because he has no fucking idea what to say. Bucky is standing close to the table, his working clothes still on, his hair pushed back with Brylcream. He looks like Cary Grant in that comedy they chaperoned Bucky's little sister and her friends to watch last week. 

“All right,” Steve says. “Sit.” 

Bucky’s eyes widen a fraction. He pulls one of the chairs away from the table and sits down without looking away from him. Steve bites his lower lip, trying to make his brain function to perform the most basic tasks. He walks to the armchair and recovers a pillow and a threadbare blanket that end up thrown in front of Bucky on the floor. 

Bucky cocks an eyebrow and Steve shrugs. “I am not fucking up my knees more than they already are, pal.”

At that, Bucky snorts, hiding his face in a hand, elbow pointed on the surface of the table, a lovely blush spreading on his cheeks. Steve takes advantage of his distraction to kneel slowly, mindful of his fucked up back. When he is settled and comfortable enough he starts running his hands up and down Bucky’s thighs. Bucky stiffens, his smile freezing on his face, but doesn’t move to push him away.

Jesus, Bucky’s thighs. 

When Steve unbuttons Bucky’s trousers, he can already feel Bucky’s erection pressing against his wrist. A shiver runs down his spine and he has to focus really hard on his task to avoid freaking out. He’s doing this. He has never backed off from a challenge his whole fucking life. Who cares if he has never done this before? It can’t be rocket science, can it?

He hooks his fingers to the hem of Bucky’s slacks and looks up. “Can I?” he asks. After all, Bucky didn’t take his off last time. Maybe there are rules he’s not aware of. Bucky hesitates and looks over his shoulder towards the door. It’s closed from the inside and Steve looks at Bucky thinking quick before he turns back and nods. “Yes, but… we have to be quiet.”

Steve nods and takes down Bucky’s pants and briefs in one go, sliding them down along his thighs and calves. He’s such a work of art, Bucky, Steve thinks. His body is fit and slim like a Greek hero. Like Miron’s Discobolus, the perfect athlete, forever stuck in a display of athletic prowess. Bucky’s like that, young and muscular like the ephebes of Steve’s sketches, haphazardly drafted when he visited the plaster cast gallery at the MET with his art class the previous fall. His cock is half hard, and if Steve had any doubts about it, they have pretty much disappeared by now. He bites the inside of his mouth. “Well, you are definitely going to shut me up.”

Bucky covers his face with both hands and groans. “You’re such a punk.” He can’t mask his amusement mixed up with embarrassment though, or the way his chest is shaking with nervous laughter. “I am going to regret this so much, am I not?” he complains. But he is smiling. It’s a strange smile, something that just a very small group of people ever saw on Bucky Barnes. It’s private, and soft, and a bit bashful, and so genuine it breaks Steve’s heart.

“Nah,” Steve shrugs, heart beating too fast for its own good. He tilts his head towards the table, where the two-dollar bill is still lying. “I can assure you, pal, you got yourself a bargain.”

And that’s how it goes, from that moment on.

Steve’s not sure if he has a definition for what they share. It can happen for days in a row or once every few months. It can happen out of the blue or mid-conversation or after a long day or a fight or one of Steve’s crazy shenanigans. One slips two bucks to the other, or slams them on the table, or pushes them against the other’s chest. And those two dollars are the key to unlock a secret, every time. A secret universe, known only to them.

It takes Steve a while to realise that it’s always the same two-dollar bill.

It’s suckjobs and jacking off at first, and then it’s Bucky’s mouth worshipping Steve’s broken body with such care, such dedition, Steve has to hide his face in the crook of his elbow because he’s crying and he cannot stop. And then it’s lazy kisses on Sunday morning instead of church, the crumpled bill balled up in Bucky’s fist. And then… and then it’s more. And Steve cannot put into words what he feels, sinking into Bucky’s body, welcoming him inside his. It’s like, for a moment, forgetting that he’s broken. Bucky’s arms… it’s the only place in the world in which he feels enough. Bucky makes him whole. Always has. Always will.

It goes on for months.

For years.

People whisper and they don’t care.

There’s still time, they think. Deep inside of him, Steve wonders if they are just waiting for the last pneumonia or the last asthma fit or the last whatever the fuck his body won’t be strong enough to take anymore. Selfishly, Steve wishes to keep exchanging those two dollars for as long as possible.

And then war comes. 

And Bucky leaves.

There’s something missing, then. Even after Doctor Erskine gives Steve a body that fits his soul. He still feels incomplete. He still misses half of it. He would always miss half of it, even if they made him as big as the Empire State Building.

_You always have these eyes_ , Cindy Day, USO girl from Cincinnati, Ohio, tells him once, on the train to Milwaukee. _Like you forgot something and you cannot wrap your mind around it_.

_Some time ago_ , Steve tells her with a bittersweet smile, _I lost two bucks._

Steve writes letters that will end up censored by the brass and Bucky doesn’t answer.

Steve films stupid propaganda movies and Bucky gets shot at Salerno.

Truth is, Steve’s not whole. Even after Peggy Carter’s fiery eyes and the promise of a future he could have never imagined before. A future in which he has a wife, maybe, and a home and children and a good job, after doing his part, after serving. Happily ever after. That was the plan for Bucky, he thinks. Steve always believed so. _As soon as I’m out of the picture,_ he had thought, once upon a time, in Brooklyn, lying in bed with Bucky sleeping curled behind him. It was a bit morbid, maybe, but his life had always been a long, long conversation with death. 

But even after Peggy, even when the hope of a normal life suddenly appeared in front of him, a life without ailments and without... A normal life, after everything, a life with two bucks less but a safe one. He could do that. He… But does he want that?

And Bucky’s different, during the war. They both are. God knows Steve is. Bucky has lost the smile and he has lost the swagger and has lost his easy-going sense of humor and his enthusiasm and fervor towards the world. Sometimes Steve wonders what else was taken from him on that table in Austria, because there’s something more missing and he cannot put his finger on it. Bucky follows him into the jaws of death, Bucky’s by his side every time he needs him, Bucky’s there, a shoulder to lean on, always a step back. And yet he’s a thousand miles away.

There is still - always - something missing. 

Until he punches a frayed two-dollar bill into Bucky’s chest after a fight so vicious Steve can’t remember ever having before. But when Bucky realizes what Steve’s asking of him, all his anger, all his rage, everything that he lost in the chasm of life experience that opened between them, is channeled into the most desperate fucking they ever experienced. And Jesus, how glad Steve is to take everything Bucky’s willing to give. 

And in exchange for that - for all that - Steve’s glad to give back his two bucks.

And Bucky still has them with him when he falls.

And Bucky still has them with him at the bottom of a ravine, in the freezing waters of the Danube, when Steve realizes those two bucks were the only part of his life he couldn’t live without.

***

It’s hard when Bucky comes back.

Because he doesn’t. 

Not immediately. Not when Steve desperately needs him. Two years go by before Steve finds him again. Two years. _Twotwotwo_. And Bucky didn’t even want to be found by him. 

It’s six months in cryo before Shuri, Princess of Wakanda, not much younger than they were in 1937, slowly and patiently reconstructs the puzzle of Bucky’s mind.

Steve can only wait. 

He was never too good at that.

It’s two more months before they start building back. Two months of silences and Steve jumping up and down secret jets and Bucky welcoming him with a bale of hay pushed in his arms or a baby goat or a chicken or a fishing net or a handful of tiles.

They just started building back.

They just fucking started, when hell breaks loose and doom falls from the sky and Steve loses Bucky again. He watches him disintegrate in front of his eyes into a million little pieces. 

Steve falls on his knees in Bucky’s ashes and thinks, _I should have died in that bed in that tenement in Brooklyn that winter in ‘41. I should have died inside Howard’s machine, fried by radiation. I should have died jumping off the plane to get to Kreischberg, mowed by bullets. I should have died frozen to death in Bastogne._

Any death would have been better than watching Bucky disappear all over again - falling from the train, walking away from the Potomac, closing his eyes in a Wakandan cryochamber, and now this.

_What did I do wrong, God?_

_Is this my punishment, God, for loving him too much?_

It’s five years.

It’s longer than ever.

And when it’s done, nothing’s the same anymore.

He tells Bucky, sitting on the roof of a Brooklyn brownstone, watching the sunset disappear beyond the East River, beyond Manhattan. They do it every day since they moved here. It’s still mostly empty, the house, just the essentials. They have a bedroom each, a bed each, they share everything else.

“Some things are,” Bucky says, and it’s a bit more than a whisper, and sometimes - sometimes - Steve still doesn’t believe he’s real. “Lemme show you something, Steve.”

He fishes his wallet from his pocket and takes out a two-dollar bill. Steve doesn’t know why, but he’s not surprised. Maybe this was the moment all along, he thinks. It had to be here. Right here. Right now. 

Bucky flattens the banknote against his thigh and Steve’s holding his breath.

“Same face of that fucker Thomas Jefferson,” Bucky says, half-accusatory, half-fond.

Steve lets out a noise that could be a laugh and could be a sob.

Bucky tilts his head to the side. He smiles. It’s private and soft and a bit insecure and so genuine Steve feels his heart breaking all over again, a hundred years in the future. And he gets it, now. That’s the moment in which he understood it the first time. That it was forever this thing between them. That it was be-all and end-all. _End of the line_. Bucky’d said it first. He understood it first. Loved him first.

But a line, Euclid teaches, is a breadthless length. 

“The design is different.”

“Yeah,” Bucky shrugs with his good shoulder, then his smile becomes a smirk. There’s still a wisp of fragility, of doubt, like there had been a wisp of cologne in Bucky’s smell, so many years, so many lives ago. “The worth too,” he pauses, looking at Steve with something like a challenge in his eye. “I cannot even buy a damn coffee with two dollars nowadays, and once upon a time I could buy a blowjob from the best guy in Brooklyn.”

Steve bursts into laughter. It’s from his heart and from his soul and from his very very essence. It’s from that boy who wheezed his lungs out if he dared let himself go too much; it’s from the lost man who caught a train from New York to Los Angeles playing dancing monkey on a stage; it’s from the soldier in the only war worth fighting, and yet the one that took the most from him; it’s from the man out of time and the ghost who chased another ghost; it’s from the rebel and the saint; the savior and the destroyer. Steve laughs and his cheeks are wet with tears. When he stops, sobs shaking him head to toe, Bucky’s still there, a two dollar bill between index and medium finger. Today and a century ago.

An offering.

A chance.

“I can assure you, pal,” Steve says, snatching the bill from Bucky’s hand and heaving himself up. “You got yourself a bargain.”

**Author's Note:**

> Canarsie is a very pretty area in Brooklyn that was built for middle class immigrants around the 30s. [Source](https://www.brownstoner.com/architecture/brooklyn-architecture-canarsie-649-east-91st-street-middle-class-houses-1930s-great-depression/).
> 
> Sands Street and Brooklyn queer scene in the 30s: [source](https://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/213805.html). 
> 
> Asthma and Steve Rogers: source one,[ source two.](https://cap-chronism.dreamwidth.org/6115.html) There are others, like various posts on [historicallyaccuratesteve](https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/) and [steve-rogers-new-york](https://steve-rogers-new-york.tumblr.com/) which are always a gift of god when you write Pre-War.
> 
> Manhattan and Queens Traction Company was a streetcar company operating in Manhattan and Queens County, New York between 1913 and 1937. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_and_Queens_Traction_Company). Abraham & Straus was a Brooklyn-based department store that was later bought by Macy's. Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_%26_Straus). If you read other fics by me, you know that I have a soft spot for Bucky being partly Jewish. I like to imagine that his family's contacts among the Jewish community got Steve his job at Mr Rosenberg, so that's why he's particularly pissed at the old bat. But hush, don't tell Steve.
> 
> The movie with Cary Grant that Steve mentions is [The Awful Truth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_Truth).


End file.
